The above links to a press release I’ve just read courtesy of Google’s News Alert service about The Lenmeister’s new management, which also mentions his plan for “extensive worldwide touring”. This sounds very intriguing – LC turned 70 last September and did his last concerts over ten years ago. Should we really believe that LC is seriously considering such international frolicking at his advanced age? I thought he was growing old gracefully and taking it easy these days? Maybe he’s getting bored now and is longing for some excitement (as well, perhaps, as musical inspiration, if a few of the tracks on the last album Dear Heather are anything to go by). I wonder if the old Cohen heart (and loins too, probably) can still withstand life on the road? Then again, I remember reading somewhere that he said he’d like to die onstage, so maybe it’s all part of some very Cohenesque plan. Kind of reminds me of what Hemingway said about writing: “In going where you have to go, and doing what you have to do, and seeing what you have to see, you dull and blunt the instrument you write with. But I would rather have it bent and dull and know I had to put it to the grindstone again and hammer it into shape and put a whetstone to it, and know that I had something to write about, than to have it bright and shining and nothing to say, or smooth and well-oiled in the closet, but unused.” In other words, Leonard Cohen should come out of the closet!